Earlier this month, we shared the next chapter of the Gates Foundation's U.S. education strategy, including our commitment to double the rate of growth and help 10 million more 18-to-34-year-olds earn credentials that open doors to economic opportunity by 2045. A key part of that work is helping colleges and universities create more personalized, responsive, and effective experiences for students—and we believe AI has the potential to accelerate that progress when implemented thoughtfully and responsibly. To share more about one way we're putting that vision into action, I'm passing the mic for this newsletter to my colleague Mei-Yen Ireland, Deputy Director of our Digital Holistic Student Supports team, who is leading an exciting new initiative to help institutions explore what responsible, learner-centered AI transformation can look like in practice.
- Patrick
Colleagues,
Artificial intelligence is moving quickly across higher education—but how and for whom AI innovation creates positive impact is still uncertain, and institutions are looking for guidance and examples. Nearly every college and university is experimenting with AI in some way, but we're hearing a common question from institutional leaders: How can we use AI responsibly to better serve students? And what examples from other institutions show how AI can support meaningful changes in teaching, student supports, and operations?
We want to play a role in helping the field answer these questions and that’s why we're excited to share the launch of a new funding opportunity for broad-access colleges and universities: AI Transformation Learning Grants. Through this initiative, the Gates Foundation will support up to eight institutions that are pursuing bold, institution-wide approaches to AI transformation, while creating opportunities for the field to learn alongside them.
Importantly, this is not a grant program focused on implementing a chatbot or adding AI to an existing process. We're looking for institutions that are using this moment to rethink how they operate, support students, modernize data and technology, redesign workflows, strengthen teaching and learning, or build the organizational capabilities needed to thrive in an AI-enabled future.
Each selected institution will receive a learning grant of approximately $150,000-$200,000 to support documentation, reflection, and knowledge sharing as they advance their work during the 2026-27 academic year. The goal is as much about learning as it is about implementation. We want to better understand – and help the field better understand – what it looks like for institutions to pursue meaningful AI transformation and share practical lessons from those efforts.
The call for concepts opened on August 7th, 2026, with proposal submissions due September 11. If your institution is pursuing an ambitious vision for AI-enabled transformation, we'd love to hear from you. Full details, application materials, and FAQs are available at ailearninggrants.org.
We're excited to learn alongside institutions that are exploring how responsible, equitable uses of AI transformation can better support students, improve outcomes, and help more learners pursue and achieve their dreams.
With gratitude,
Mei-Yen Ireland,
Deputy Director, Digital Holistic Student Supports